


Ohana

by NerdsLikeUs



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e18 The Singularity, Gen, Kind of fluff + angst, So many feels about this you guys, Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-04 20:41:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6674788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NerdsLikeUs/pseuds/NerdsLikeUs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Ohana means family. Family means no one gets left behind, or forgotten.</em><br/>Daisy reflects on her families, and tries to remember which one is the true one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ohana

Does she really believe that? Her head is a mess. She isn't sure.  
She’d had a family once, twice.  
On the Bus, with the team. Laughter and love and games and pranks, someone to hold you when you cry. All the things a family should have. And she was happy and at home.  
But then everything had happened, with Ward and Hydra and betrayal, and her family had been split and shattered. It hurt, so badly, even now the memory of it made her ache and shudder. After that, things hadn't been the same.  
But still, she'd been okay. She'd begun to find her place in SHIELD, with May as her SO and a new team to make her laugh. They were not a family, not in the same way, but they were a team. And for a while, that had been enough.  
Until she had changed. Until she found her parents and the truth of her past. Until SHIELD was collapsing all over again in a completely different way, and this new-old inhuman family were her only solid ground.  
She felt she belonged with them, to them, that they were her people and her place. Where her SHIELD team had feared her, excluded her, turned their heads away, those in Afterlife embraced her. They showed her who she truly was and who she could be, and she loved them for it.  
Finally, she had thought, she had found a family that would last. One that would not fear her, or fall apart, or send her back. They were hers and she was theirs, and she believed it with her whole self. So much so that she chose their side over SHIELD's, over Coulson's. And she threw May down into the dust.  
She could never go back now, she knew. Things between her and the last remnants of her Bus family had broken the moment she turned her hand on May. So when Jiaying's true plan was revealed, and she learned how false her solid ground had really been, the pain of the loss of two families hurt more than the hand around her throat.  
Coulson welcomed her back. Coulson promised her a team. A chance for a new family. But deep in her heart, like a splinter she could feel but not pluck, she knew that she had no more chances.  
She called herself _Daisy_ , a reminder of what it felt like to have a family, a souvenir from a place she knew she would never visit again.  
She was back with SHIELD again, but there was no family this time, barely even a team. Simmons and May were gone, and as a result Fitz and Coulson were like halves of themselves. She had Mack, a true and steady partner at last, but she would not allow herself to form another family.  
She threw her whole self into the work, and kept her heart well away from any hoping.  
Mostly she kept the pain buried. Sometimes, though, that pesky sliver in her heart would edge its way to the surface.  
Like when Coulson fell in love, and it wasn't with May; when he ordered Lincoln handed over; when she discovered he knew about the ATCU’s methods and didn't care; when he stopped consulting her and started ordering instead. When May left for leave; when she came back with shadows in her eyes; when she took Lincoln in and seemed to trust him. When Simmons came back undamaged but different, and they didn't talk; when Fitz spiralled but didn't turn to her for help; when she let her new team members go back home, to the kind of home she would never have. When unknowns on the internet cried out that she was dangerous and a freak, and she saw in their fear that which had been in the eyes of her family.  
She was far away, and so alone. She kissed Lincoln, but the hollowness did not fill, merely softened. She allowed herself to love him, tried to create something with him, a patched and crooked thing built from both their broken hearts.  
She had a person, but not a family, and she felt that absence like it was a missing limb.

And then, Hive. In one, solitary, blessed moment, she is no longer alone. She feels it fill her, pour into her emptiness and make her whole. Finally, she has a family. More than that, she _is_ a family, a collection of parts swarming through her, around her, connecting her to the whole. And it is beautiful.  
She feels it, wants to share it, to grow the family. She asks her teammates, the ones who hadn't been strong enough, but they prefer weakness and loneliness. She does not comprehend them, but the sting of their rejection is diluted and dissolved by the love of the family. Nothing could compare to that great love, nothing could cast a shadow over her heart when it was a part of such a connection.  
Fitz is there, and she pins him to the wall. His eyes are wide, and she sees again that fear in them. She knows, can see in her heart and her memories that she does not want to hurt him, but that look in his eyes and the whispering of the family in her mind spur her on.  
"You don't have to pity me anymore," she says, and smiles.  
She doesn't kill him, but leaves him on the floor with a warning that next time she will.  
She returns to Him, feels herself drawn without having to think where to go. Her mind is blissfully clear, only the thoughts of her finally found family touching the surface.  
She has never felt this way before, so happy and at peace.  
They go to the town, the town that is theirs now, and at last she has a home to go with her family.  
She is standing with her family outside the house, when she hears James trying to decide on a name for himself, and the memory of the first time Mack called her Tremors appears unbidden in her thoughts.  
She shudders, clenches, almost doubles over in her effort to fight it, but memory after memory deluges her, both moments she loves and ones she'd rather forget.  
_Flying in Lola for the first time. Sitting with her team in the sunset, drinking beer and watching the slingshot launch. Reading the names of the agents who protected her on the wall at the Academy. Simmons trying to drag away the superior officer she just shot with the night-night gun. Fitz, his face covered in shaving cream. Ward's expression after she kissed him and after she shot him. Lincoln holding her hand and making her float. Mack standing by her side as they waited at the portal. Trip, his skin grey and crumbling. Bobbi and Hunter raising a glass. May lying on the ground after they fought; May lying on the ground after she pinned her for the first time in training. Coulson, holding her as she cried at the truth._  
She's so confused, bludgeoned and bewildered. She aches and aches, feels like she could laugh or cry, giggle in delight or wail enough to break the sky. It's the most she's felt in so long, and it's terrible and horrible and wonderful. She sees them, her family, her friends, her team, and wonders if she meant what she said to Fitz.  
Then she looks up, into the face of her new family. And everything is back to sweet, comfortable oblivion.  
"I'm fine," she tells Him, and it's true. She is fine, content, full of surety. The delicious ache she felt already seems like a half forgotten dream.  
He smiles at her, and the others all turn to go inside. As she goes to follow them, a last small soft memory blooms full colour in her mind.  
_They are on the Bus, all that time ago, playing a game. They had given up on Scrabble a while ago, having finally accepted that Simmons would beat them every time, but this new game isn't much better. They made the mistake of letting Fitzsimmons be a team, and the two of them are busy reaffirming her suspicion that they are psychically linked. It's Fitz's turn, and he has to say one quote to try and get Simmons to guess the movie._  
_He thinks for barely a second before saying in a high voice, "This is my family. I found it all on my own. It is little, and broken, but still good. Yeah. Still good."_  
_"Lilo and Stitch!" cries Simmons without missing a beat. The two of them crow in triumph while the others groan, but Skye can't help but look around for a moment and think,_ Yeah. Still good.  
She shakes her head a little to clear it, and follows the Hive inside.

**Author's Note:**

> For pretty much this whole season I've been finding it really hard to connect to and understand Daisy. But this episode, pretty much just those few lines that she says to Fitz, made something click in my mind, and suddenly ... well, this happened. Title, etc. from 'Lilo and Stitch', hope you enjoyed it! Thanks for reading :)


End file.
